Free Ash and Silver by Carol Berg

seaward wall. Grateful, I ate the dried apples I’d stuffed in my jaque that morning. The provision bag remained with my horse in a stand of beeches south of the river.
    At mid-morning, sharp hails drew me onto my knees between the chimneys. A party of six at the gate, this time all men, four of them heavily armed. The gate guards touched their brows as the six rode in, recognizing the travelers as men of rank. None of the party pressed the guards to proper reverence for a prince who aspired to be king, and yet . . .
    The two who were not so obviously men-at-arms were both big men, and the larger of the two could surely be Prince Bayard, called the Smith for his build and his brutish hand. Tall and broad in back and chest, he wore a thick beard and a wide hat with the brim curled rakishly on one side. Though his garb was common leather and russet, he sat his mount with the ease of a knight and the assurance that the world was his to command.
    The man who rode beside and slightly behind the bearded man dismounted with equal swagger. He was broad in chest and back as well, but he’d scarce reach the other man’s shoulder. More significantly, his fur-lined pelisse was the color of good wine, and no hat or hood adorned his head, just a mask that covered the left side of his face. A pureblood sorcerer.
    As the others waited, the pureblood knelt in the center of the gatewayand laid his hands on the earth. My fists clenched on their own, and my senses reached deep, as if I might feel his magic flow. Did he lay down a trip thread to warn if anyone followed or a trap to prevent their crossing? Or did he seek evidence of magic? The Order trained us to minimize the leavings from our spellwork, but if the man was exceptionally skilled at detection, he might notice a slight residue from my veil. Information worth the knowing. I’d best get an estimate of his skills before I left.
    The pureblood rose and wiped his hands on his braies, then touched his forehead and bowed before speaking to the man in the hat—his contract master, then. A pureblood, seeing himself divinely gifted with magic, deferred to no ordinary, even royalty, save the one who had paid handsomely for his services.
    Contracts were the foundation of pureblood life in Navronne, providing the sorcerers’ families wealth and security in exchange for their magic. Before relinquishing my past to the Order, so Inek told me, I had been contracted to a necropolis. I had assumed that my bent, the unique talent inherited from the bloodline of one of my parents, must be weak. But if I could create such artwork as that portrait, why could my family find no better contract for me than a city of the dead—a burial ground?
    My head pounded its usual warning to stop reaching for memories that weren’t there. The task of the moment must come first. The big man in the hat was most assuredly a wealthy man to own a pureblood contract. But why would a prince of Navronne visit this dismal town while embroiled in a war that engulfed the entirety of the kingdom?
    As the leader and his men-at-arms dismounted, the pureblood eyed the town, scanning slowly, carefully, from the river to the palisade, across the mud streets, the unpainted houses and sheds, and upward . . .
    I lay still as the broken bricks, though my heart raced like that of a raw tyro.
    Ridiculous. He couldn’t know I was up here.
    I peered around the chimney again. One of the four men-at-arms led the horses into the farrier’s yard, while another took a post just inside the gate. The pureblood, his master, and the remaining two soldiers had been joined by a plump townsman with spindle shanks and a great beak of a nose. Likely a town official, as a red badge adorned his tabard. He bowed deeply and waved a hand toward the fish-drying house.
    As the party moved toward the long, low shed, the awkward fellow bowed every other step. After he tripped over his own boots, near